Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [76]
Despite our formal cleanup schedule—we each had our own tasks to perform, from vacuuming to scrubbing bathrooms—the place definitely looked lived in. It was kind of tattered and messy all the time.
We shared cooking duties too, and all ate together at one long table, family style. I didn't really like helping to make dinner, so when it was my turn, I'd pop a couple of packages of frozen fish sticks in the oven and serve it with a side order of warmed-up Tater Tots.
My biggest problem was learning how to fill my days. My hospital days had been filled with aimless pacing. My real-world days had to be more structured than that.
Every day I made a fifteen-minute drive over to North Street in Harrison to the day hospital. I left the halfway house every morning at 8:45 to be there by 9:00. The morning was filled with nonsense. We had art therapy, assertiveness training, group therapy, and classes in leather, wood and jewelry working as well as grocery shopping and cooking. I felt they treated us like morons. I'd sit for forty-five minutes sanding a piece of wood. Then a staff member would give me the okay to sand another piece of wood.
I had lunch there every day—every day an ice cream sandwich—and by 1:45 it was over. Then my problems began. How could I spend the rest of the day? Because Futura House wanted us to find meaningful things to do with our days, the house was closed and locked between 9:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M. SO what was I to do with my time?
While I was in the hospital, I had insisted I would return to work at Rye Psychiatric. After I was released, though, I decided not to even try. There were too many staffers from New York Hospital who moonlighted there. I didn't want to keep bumping into people from my patient days. What's more, after I had been hospitalized for a while, Eddie Mae Barnes had, with my permission, announced to the staff where I was. They sent me flowers, which I appreciated. But now I felt uneasy going back knowing that they knew. So that left me with nowhere to go, and nothing to do.
I tried to do something fun, like getting my hair done. My mom promised to pay for my appointment if I wanted to improve my appearance. But I couldn't get my hair done every day. And besides, somehow the hairdresser managed to let me know, subtly, but nonetheless clearly, that in my porked-out state I was never going to look like a movie star no matter how many perms he gave me.
Mostly, though, I just went home. I'd get in my car at the day program, drive to Scarsdale, climb right into my old bed in my old room, and stay there until Futura House opened up again in the late afternoon. My dad and mom were both working. My dad never came home early enough to find me. And on the few occasions my mother did pop in, I tried to charm her. I complained about the rules that had locked me out until late afternoon, and the fact that I had nowhere to go.
“I didn't think you'd mind if I came here.”
Surprisingly, she didn't seem to.
But before too long Deanna, my social worker, got wind of what I was doing, and she did mind, a lot. After that I was forbidden to go home, except on weekends.
A couple of times I tried using my key to sneak into my room at Futura House, popping out after 4:00 P.M. when it was safe. But mostly I just wandered about aimlessly. Usually I wound up in the park across from Futura's apartment building, sitting on the benches talking to the bums, the crazy people, the bag ladies and druggies. We talked mostly nonsense. But still they fascinated me, especially Isaiah, a tall man who wore white robes.
When in a burst of candor I described my new friends to Deanna, she hit the roof again. The park was off-limits too, she said. Together she and I worked out a new plan. I was to remain at St. Vincent's Hospital until 3:00 P.M., and then spend one hour in the library before coming home.
My new day just